At Tuesday’s Cache County Council meeting, representatives from the Utah Association of Counties presented their proposal to form an urban-rural caucus. They also discussed the upcoming implementation of recently enacted legislation.
The urban-rural caucus would focus on issues that affect both urban and rural areas, and would create a forum for the counties to explore solutions to their common problems.
“We like the idea of taking time to concentrate on issues that are important to urban and rural communities,” said Adam Trupp, the chief executive officer of the UAC. “There are many problems that affect both urban and rural areas across the state. Certainly Cache County deals with many of the same issues as Salt Lake County such as a large, growing population. If representatives of both counties could meet and discuss such problems, perhaps common ground could be found, and a solution could emerge.”
The idea for an urban-rural caucus was first presented by Salt Lake County council member, Aimee Winder Newton, who initially thought just the most urbanized counties would participate. However, the UAC believed it would be beneficial to also include rural counties in the conversation.
Next year, the Utah Indigent Defense Act will place a financial strain on county and local governments. Utah is one of only two states that does not fund the cost of defending indigent criminal offenders on a statewide level. Instead, it delegates the funding of those costs to the counties. Trupp expressed concern that the burden may be overwhelming in rural areas, so discussions need to be had to assure the rural counties were not being given more than they could handle.
2016 will also mark the rollout of the Utah Justice Reinvestment Initiative, which seeks to divert nonviolent offenders from incarceration by placing them in non-custodial rehabilitation programs. This will place pressure on the counties to fund those rehabilitation programs, and again, the effect on rural counties that may be financially devastating.
“As these financial challenges approach, counties have to recognize that we need to fashion solutions that serve all of our colleagues and counties the same,” said Trupp. “Counties need to find solutions and share burdens as much as possible without taking everything on their shoulders. We need to recognize that counties can push back against the state if necessary.”
Governor Gary Herbert released a $16 billion budget Wednesday that included cuts to the general fund, the source for most county funding. Lincoln Shurtz warned the council of a “rough road ahead financially.”
UAC placed several funding requests with the governor including $6.4 million for statewide Medicaid match funding for drug abusers and the mentally ill and a $9 million request for the justice reinvestment initiative to help fund some of the required rehabilitation programs.
Shurtz predicted that the upcoming policy that might have the greatest effect on Cache County is the transportation funding proposal, which gives counties the right to impose a quarter-cent local option sales tax to be used for road improvement and public transit projects.
The Cache County Council had previously expressed concern that it did not have a need or want to distribute the mandatory 40 percent of the revenue from the transportation funding proposal to public transit, so a proposal has been put together that would allow the county to allocate the funds differently.
“We have worked very closely with the Jack Draxler, the representative in charge of drafting the proposal, and have made a few suggestions to ensure that it is narrowly tailored enough to address the circumstances in Cache County,” said Shurtz, the governmental affairs director for UAC. “Hopefully those suggestions will help to get that proposal passed.”
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